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Thursday 4 February 2010

USB to Rig Interface and CW keying

Going to build an interface that will do CAT control and CW keying using USB

I can see I could start off with an FT232, FT2232 or FT4232 I cannot find samples in SSOP28, LQFP48 and 64 pin packages (You can also buy them <£8 from Farnell, Digikey or Mouser) and have single, dual or quad com port emulation, the FT232, 2232, 4232 datasheets cover the TTL-RS232 level conversion and self powered (from USB port) capability. There are prebuilt modules complete with USB socket and header pins.

If paranoid could add opto isolation for the keyed RTS/CTR signals using single 4N25 channel or dual channel 4N32 (22p from Farnell).

There are options available to buy (I already have a early G4ZLP USB CAT and K1EL USB WinKey interface) but looking for something that could be home brewed as pretty sure plenty made themselves a COM or LPT port keyer using a NPN transistor at some point.

Wonder if any interest in this as a kit?

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